Kombucha Tea

About a month ago, a colleague at work bought me my first Kombucha Tea. I had an immediate rush of "high" at work and was quite impressed with its affects. I looked up the benefits of Kombucha Tea, it's origins and was amazed that I hadn't been drinking this sooner. Well, they sell it for $3.99 a bottle Mollie Stone's. You can purchase it for a dollar less at WholeFoods, but it's still quite an expensive daily splurge, especially for two.

I immediately brought AG into the fold and we were both interested in partaking it on a daily basis. So for the last month, we've been drinking 16oz a daily. When I realized that I wanted this to be a daily part of our lives for the rest of our lives, I began looking into brewing the stuff myself. Everything I read on the internet suggested that it was quite easy to do, just a little cumbersome and messy... then I stumbled upon a system that marketed itself as a "continuous brewing system." Meaning that you buy a pot with a spigot so you can continue adding tea to the concoction and pour out of the spigot so you don't have to rewash and resanitize all your equipment. This system was charging over $200. Although I was tempted and ready to pork out the cash to purchase the system (for convenience's sake), my Procurement background had me do the extra steps to research the total cost of the system myself. I discovered that I could purchase each separate item, the ceramic pot with the spigot, the SCOBY (the "Symbiotic Culture") for less than $60.

I then went online and found tons of information on how to brew it myself. It takes about 5 days to brew it initially, and if you want it to be effervescent then another 5 days to bottle it and allow errervescence to do its magic. I added a squeeze of lime for taste, and yesterday AG and I drank the first of the bottled brew and it was delicious. Almost as good as the stuff at the store. I say almost because the bottled tea we buy at the store had other flavors. I've since begun my second batch and am now ready for bottling. This time I'll add ginger and lemon.

If you haven't already researched the benefits of this tea, you should check out some at www.getkombucha.com - this is where the guy is selling his full brewing system. He has a blog on his site where tons of people have written to respond and provide feedback on the benefits to them. People who had diabetes didn't need to take their insulin shots when drinking the tea daily. From my research it appears that the culture in the tea is probiotic and has great stomache enzymes that will help the digestive system, thereby providing support to the rest of our internal systems.

I'm very psyched that my tea has turned out so well and that it was so easy to brew. It's been awhile since I've allowed myself to set a goal and achieve it. So much lately has been about just taking care of the daily stuff and getting through the week. I know we are just around the bend and things will be getting easier with Aesha. In the meantime, life continues and I have lots of plans.